Million Dollar WSOP Event Features Live Satellites Currently Running

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 by Ryan

The World Series of Poker has continually built up the hype surrounding the most expensive poker tournament in history, which will feature a $1 million buy-in at the 2012 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. The hype has also built itself up quite a bit as well, but it seems that even though the buy-in is an incredible $1 million, there will be a way for many different levels of players to potentially earn their way into this massive tournament. The WSOP has officially announced that there will be many different casinos around the country holding satellites for the event, which is called “The Big One for One Drop”.

The first casino that will hold a satellite to this event is the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles, and it will run on the 5th of April (tomorrow). This casino is the first of 14 casinos that have decided to run satellites into the event, and many players have won seats into the satellite as well. They either won their way into the event for free, or played a $150 step satellite that was run as well. Players don’t have to win their way into the satellite though, as they are able to buy-in to the satellite if they choose to for $500. Players who win this satellite will win a $25,300 seat into The Big One for One Drop Mega Satellite, as well as airfare and accommodations for the event as well. The tournament will run on June 30th in Las Vegas.

This will be the similar style of tournament that is going to be ran at the different satellite locations around the country, and the general idea is that players will be able to win their way to the Mega Satellite through different smaller satellites. As far as the other satellite locations on the schedule, it will look as follows:

For every 40 players that are in the Mega Satellite that is run, there will be one seat awarded to the $1 million buy-in event.

The charitable organization that is paired with this tournament is called One Drop, and it was created by the founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte. The idea behind the tournament is that one ninth of every buy-in ($111,111), will go towards the charity, with the rest of the money from each buy-in going into the prize pool with no other standard fees being taken either. Currently, the prize pool is over $19.5 million, but that number will definitely go up as the Mega Satellite’s and other buy-in’s continue to roll in over the coming months as well.